Before exploring the many ways in which our economy needs to transform, it’s important to take a step back and not only reflect on how commercial interests have come to impose themselves on our society but also take stock of what we might be losing by allowing market values to erode rather than enrich our lives. 

My inspiration for this post comes from Michael J. Sandel’s book What Money Can’t Buy and the Moral Limits of Markets, which raises questions about how far the market should be allowed to participate in social and civic life. Sandel asks us to consider what a world in which everything is up for sale looks like – and quickly makes the point that both inequality and corruption would become endemic and ingrained issues. Inequality because when everything from political influence and healthcare to education and security can be bought and sold, the distribution of income and wealth will invariably grow larger. And corruption in the sense of eroding the fundamental essence of our beings by giving ourselves over to market values that have the tendency to corrode the true purpose and meaning of good and important things in our lives by putting a price on everything. 

We currently live in a time when rising wealth inequality is one of the major issues of the day and one can pick up some extra cash by renting out advertising space on their own body – a time when buying and selling increasingly applies to the whole of life. Sandel urges us to ask ourselves if we want to continue living in this way. I know that I don’t – and I most certainly don’t want my son to live in a world that continues in this way. A world that, because of misplaced market values, encourages him to outsource his thinking to tech or direct his time and attention to things that generate advertising dollars instead of feed his soul. A world that is selling off our cherished natural lands and pushing us to wage wars against each other for business and other undefined interests. 

Sandel argues that we didn’t get to this place because of any deliberate choice but rather that it sort of just happened. I believe, however, that to truly understand how we got here we cannot ignore what we know to be true about the failures of our current prevailing economic forms as resource allocation systems and the large-scale social and environmental problems they have created. It is from here that we need to begin examining the many ways in which our economy must transform, looking first at how hybrid organizations that combine approaches from each of the traditional economic forms might not only help to address our current problems but also move us closer to building a new more prosperous global economic system that enriches both our lives and our lands.